Anyway, thanks for the info, Jed. I will try not to be so obtuse in the future.

Storm Constantine is female, and is best-known for her Wraeththu series, which Wikipedia says is about “a sci-fi post-apocalyptic hermaphroditic species which evolved from humanity.”

So … not really straight epic contemporary fantasy.

And I’m a little amused in passing that you happened to use the word “straight”; I know this isn’t what you meant, but (to quote Wikipedia again) “many of her novels include same-sex relationships or hermaphrodites or other twists of gender.”

…I should note that I haven’t gotten around to reading anything of hers yet; this isn’t a comment from an outraged fan. Just thought the info about S.C. was worth clarifying.

So I read “The Six Swans”, and I realized I’m familiar with an Irish version, “The Children of Lir”. It’s a bit different, more mythic and distant. Doesn’t have the thing with the shirts. This Grimm version clearly has quite a bit in common with “Black Feather”, and being aware of the reference does alter the interpretation quite a bit–it reverses the color symbolism, for one thing, which is actually a criticism of the fairytale mode. Yay, say I, to criticism of the fairytale mode.

I didn’t realize that you weren’t familiar with the fairy tale. “Black Feather” is based–although that’s not quite the right word, I should say rather that it interacts with–”The Six Swans,” which you can find here:

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sixswans/index.html

But it’s based not only on this version but also several variants of the story. You can find one, “The Twelve Brothers,” here:

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sixswans/stories/twelvebrothers.html

And woven into the tale are also images from other traditions, like the Hanging Man, which I believe is a reference to the Tarot. One thing that impressed us about the story was how the different variants of the tale, as well as elements of other tales, are woven into a whole, and used by the main character, Brenna, to understand her own life.

It occurs to me that several of the stories we chose rely on a significant amount of background knowledge–”Burning Beard” and “A Dirge for Prester John” are the two that come to mind, although “Rats” is one as well, I suppose. If you know nothing about punk, I’m not sure the story will make sense. I don’t know how that will affect how readers approach the stories . . .

I only got around to reading “Rats” today, and I see what you’re getting at. I don’t mean to get ahead of myself, as there are still quite a few reviews to post between here and there, but “Rats” takes fairytale and just rips it apart, lays open its flaws and its self-deceptions and leaves them splattered in the street to get washed with the runoff into the sewers. And even there, I had a good strong bit of skepticism until I recognized that’s what was happening. I guess I’m just personally burned out on fairytale. And that’s my hangup, and it shouldn’t reflect on the quality of either of these stories.

You know, having already stubbed my toes against the very real and apparently quite lovely Inwood Hill Park, and severely bonked my noggin on the authenticity of possibly the coolest middle name ever…it’s very possible I missed something in this story. The fairytale structure is fairly easy to discern, but from what you’re saying, maybe there’s a specific fairytale being referenced and commented upon that I’ve just never come across? Perhaps I’d better go do a bit of research…

As to whether this story–or any story–is interstitial or not: like I said somewhere else amid these last half-dozen posts, a dialogue about all this is just what I was hoping for. Part of my reason for going through all the stories like this is in hopes of figuring out where my own writing stands. I do understand and agree with the assertion that interstitiality need not be a definition so much as an avenue for discussion. Anyway, it certainly isn’t up to me to draw the line.

As long as I’ve known Tempest, she’s always gone by Tempest, so I suspect she’s using that name because it’s the one she actually goes by, the one people know her by personally.

When I read this story, it didn’t remind me at all of Gaiman, and I never thought of it as urban fantasy, since the city actually has very little to do with the story. For me, it was a story about identity, about finding one’s self both in one’s personal history and in the mythic history that we all share, which comes down to us in myths and fairy tales. Like “Rats,” the Veronica Schanoes story, it is a retelling of a fairy tale, but in a way I’d never seen before, a way that seemed to me new and interesting.

That’s part of my pitch for its interstitiality. But of course, these are the stories that the writers, first, considered interstitial, and that Delia and I, second, considered interstitial. They were included not to create a definition of the term, but to start a dialog about it. And, of course, because we really liked them . . . So, anyone is welcome to read the stories differently!

“Inwood Hill Park contains the last natural forest and salt marsh in Manhattan….“